is past, and that as more is past
there is less remaining.

It is very happily and kindly provided, that in every life there are
certain pauses and interruptions, which force consideration upon the
careless, and seriousness upon the light; points of time where one
course of action ends, and another begins; and by vicissitudes of
fortune or alteration of employment, by change of place or loss of
friendship, we are forced to say of something, _this is the last_.

An even and unvaried tenour of life always hides from our apprehension
the approach of its end. Succession is not perceived but by variation;
he that lives to-day as he lived yesterday, and expects that, as the
present day is, such will be the morrow, easily conceives time as
running in a circle and returning to itself. The uncertainty of our
duration is impressed commonly by dissimilitude of condition; it is only
by finding life changeable that we are reminded of its shortness.

This conviction, however forcible at every new impression, is every
moment fading from the mind; and partly by the inevitable incursion of
new images, and partly by voluntary exclusion of unwelcome thoughts, we
are again exposed to the universal fallacy; and we must do another thing
for the last time, before we consider that the time is nigh when we
shall do no more.

As the last Idler is published in that solemn week which the Christian
world has always set apart for the examination of the conscience, the
review of life, the extinction of earthly desires, and the renovation of
holy purposes; I hope that my readers are already disposed to view every
incident with seriousness, and improve it by meditation; and that, when
they see this series of trifles brought to a conclusion, they will
consider that, by out-living the Idler, they have passed weeks, months
and years, which are now no longer in their power; that an end must in
time be put to every thing great as to every thing little; that to life
must come its last hour, and to this system of being its last day, the
hour at which probation ceases, and repentance will be vain; the day in
which every work of the hand, and imagination of the heart shall be
brought to judgment, and an everlasting futurity shall be determined by
the past[1].

[1] This most solemn and impressive paper may be profitably compared
with the introduction of Bishop Heber's first Bampton-Lecture.

THE IDLER. No. 22[1]

Many naturalists are of opinion